Greeks Are Protesting Nazis at Both the American Embassy and the Greek Nazi Party Headquarters
Photo via Twitter Screencap
This video below taken in Greece is both an encouraging sign of increasing solidarity in the globe’s battle against white nationalism, as well as a disheartening reminder of how much America contributes to that disease.
Killed by a Nazi in #Charlottesville, Heather Heyer is now on posters in Athens, Greece.
“From Greece to America, crush the neo-Nazis” pic.twitter.com/j5sVcjbtg5
— Christopher Mathias (@letsgomathias) September 6, 2017
And just picked this up in a little grocery store in the neighborhood of Exarchia in Athens pic.twitter.com/tFHH0JXtbo
— Christopher Mathias (@letsgomathias) September 6, 2017
That’s Heather Heyer’s photo on the poster—the woman murdered by white nationalists in Charlottesville. If you listen to the man translating, the anti-fascist protest on September 16th is planned to begin in Syntagma Square in the middle of Athens. After that, the translator gets a bit confused, so I had Paste’s own Jason Rhode—who can read Greek—verify the part that he tripped over, and the plan is that once protesters gather in Syntagma Square, they will march on the American embassy and Golden Dawn’s HQ. The juxtaposition is startling. Golden Dawn is an ultranationalist far-right party in Greece that has evoked comparisons to neo-Nazis. Their flag looks like a repurposed swastika.
Photo by Milos Bicanski/Getty
The message here from protesters is that the racist abuse they witnessed in Charlottesville evokes comparisons to the fascist party they have been battling in Greece for the last 37 years. It is difficult to find more information in English on this planned protest, so it’s hard to tell how big it will be (although searching for Greek Protests on September 16 returns a bunch of 9/16 protests from previous years, so this seems to be a significant date—and Jason Rhode identified the neighborhood in this video as Exarcheia, a notorious left-wing area in Greece). At the very least, this is yet another example of America’s degradation on the global stage in the Age of Trump.
Jacob Weindling is a staff writer for Paste politics. Follow him on Twitter at @Jakeweindling.